Close to the end of the Slovenian presidency of the European Union, the 2871st meeting of the Competitiveness Council on 29 and 30 May in Brussels yielded a number of decisions in the field of research. This includes among other things the go ahead for the new Joint Technology Initiative on Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH JTI) as well as the launch of the Ljubljana Process.

The FCH JTI had been given the go ahead by the European Parliament earlier this month and it is now scheduled to be officially launched in October after the Member States have adopted the necessary regulation.

The European research and economy ministers also adopted a recommendation on the management and transfer of intellectual property (IP). The so-called Intellectual Property Charter (IP-Charter) calls upon public research institutes and universities to develop internal strategies for protecting and dealing with intellectual property. This is intended as a measure against unchecked knowledge drain and counterfeiting. At the same time the charter sets out standards for the exploitation of publicly funded research that aims to give international collaboration in this field a new quality.

In addition, this latest Competitiveness Council stressed the importance of European research infrastructures and their regional dimension. 'Excellent research infrastructures play a key role in the development of the European Research Area (ERA) by promoting excellence in science, enabling globally competitive basic and applied research,' the Council concluded, calling on the Commission to further facilitate the cooperation and combination of national, regional and local sources of funding.

With respect to the selection of the headquarters for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), Mrs Kucler Dolinar emphasised the fact that ministers had come to agree on the criteria for the selection, namely that the seat should be in one of the new Member States and it should be in a Member State that does not have a European agency or institute yet.